The beginning of the end in Afghanistan

But a perfect storm of factors forced the US President to look harder than ever for a rationale to end the conflict.

And so, in a nationally televised speech lasting less than 15 minutes, Barack Obama attempted to press the reset button. 10,000 American troops will be home by Christmas and all 33,000 troops "surged" in for the last 18 months will leave by September next year.

The way the White House tells it, the troop pullout is only the delivery of a promise made back in December 2009. Another example of the president doing what he said he would. But more than the numbers themselves - more, even than the pace of the withdrawal - look at the tone of the announcement. "We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place," the US president told his prime time audience. "We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is the responsibility of the Afghan government, which must step up its ability to protect its people." This is Barack Obama sketching out the closest thing yet to an endgame for the longest war in American history. "America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home."

Why now?

The tenor of the debate in Washington had undeniably changed in recent weeks. The pressure was mounting for Barack Obama to extricate America from Afghanistan more quickly.

Perhaps the most dramatic new impetus for an accelerated withdrawal was the death of Osama bin Laden. The demise of the world's most wanted terrorist perhaps assuaged some of the anxiety unleashed when the planes flew into the buildings on 9/ll. The spontaneous outpouring of emotion at Ground Zero and outside the White House felt very much like revenge had been exacted - or the more socially acceptable "justice". With the Al Qaeda leader gone, those who always had their reservations about Afghanistan were keen to declare mission accomplished and get out. Or at least ratchet back to a targeted counterterrorism strategy rather than a broader counterinsurgency effort that had come to look very much like a fraught attempt at nation building. What was the original reason for getting into Afghanistan? To disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda. Well, minus OBL, check that box.

But there's been something else pervading almost everything the US thinks and does right now.

The case of the ever-expanding government debt and growing concern about a staggering economic recovery. Even the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is downgrading forecasts for growth and job creation. The Yale University economist Robert Shiller recently rated the prospects of a "double dip" recession as "substantial".

Almost ten years after September 11, you could say America's greatest fear is no longer terrorism, but economic ruin. For millions of workers relegated to the ranks of the long term unemployed, it's already reality. In those circumstances, and with an election looming, it's increasingly difficult to justify a conflict costing the United States upwards of US$2 billion dollars a week. Not to mention several hundred American lives a year.

Which gets back to the deep weariness felt towards this war.

A new Pew Research Centre poll shows that, for the first time, a majority of Americans want their troops home as soon as possible. The number shot up 8 points in just the last month, 16 points since last year.

The public sentiment is such that even Republicans are departing from their traditionally aggressive stance on national security.

Take a look at what's coming out of the mouth of the leading presidential challenger, Mitt Romney. "It's time for us to bring home our troops as soon as we possibly can," he told voters during the first major debate of the 2012 cycle. "Our troops shouldn't go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation. Only the Afghanis (sic) can win Afghanistan's independence from the Taliban."

Politics more broadly is also reconfiguring. An unusual alliance of anti-war liberals and fiscally conservative Republicans, both playing to domestic political pressures, seem to have generated a consensus of sorts around the need to get the US out of Afghanistan.

The contrariness of America's testy partner in all this, the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, hasn't been helping Barack Obama convince Americans the war is still worth their "lives and treasure". In his latest broadside, the mercurial Afghan leader accused America and its allies of "using" Afghan soil "for their own purposes" and complained coalition weapons were polluting the country's environment. The outburst prompted an unusually strong response from the US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, who's counting down the days until the end of a difficult posting. Eikenberry called the comments hurtful and offensive. "When I hear some of your leaders call us occupiers, I cannot look at these mourning parents, spouses and children in the eye and give them a comforting reply... When we hear ourselves being called occupiers and worse, our pride is offended and we begin to lose our inspiration to carry on." Yet more talking points for advocates of an accelerated exit.

On the military front, commanders right up to the outgoing US Defence Secretary Robert Gates had been arguing for a more modest troop withdrawal - something less than 5,000. They argued the coalition was making progress but the gains were fragile. In the wake of Barack Obama's announcement the former Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain said such a large withdrawal was an unnecessarily risky political decision. By touting their recent successes, the military commanders perhaps have undermined their own case, appearing to tick off another one of the administration's objectives - to break the Taliban's momentum.

As for the goal of stabilising Afghanistan enough so that Afghans can take over their own security? Here too the US can point to progress. The Pentagon's been presenting numbers for 12 months, showing a transfer to Afghan security forces is underway. Afghans are already in charge of most of the area around the capital Kabul and a handful of other places have been slated for handover. In any case, even after the surge troops come out, almost 70,000 US troops will remain in Afghanistan - about twice the size of the contingent there when the anti-Iraq war candidate took office.

Then there's the conveniently timed confirmation that the US is engaged in "outreach talks" with the Taliban, geared towards brokering an end to the war. Not to mention the moves to distinguish the Taliban from Al Qaeda when imposing sanctions. If the insurgents can't be beaten, they must be negotiated with. Barack Obama's own review of the Afghan strategy concluded the movement could not be defeated as a political force. Former Taliban leaders are being brought back into the fold. Reconciliation is the buzz word. Notwithstanding warnings from some think tankers that legitimising the Taliban could risk emboldening Al Qaeda (and potentially amount to a strategic loss for America in the war on terror), it's now common wisdom that the war cannot be ended without some kind of political settlement.

It was America's special envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, who said, before his death last year, that "The weak point in America's strategy has always been this endless debate about whether we were just there to protect ourselves or had a grander vision for Afghanistan."

Barack Obama has now answered that question: the US looks determined to live with "good enough".

You have no doubt been hearing a lot about the Paris Agreement and know that it pertains to climate change, but are too embarrassed at this stage to ask for an overall explanation of what it's all about.